JEREMY Corbyn is preparing to hit households with a new “toxic” garden tax which will treble average council tax bills across the UK.

The proposal hidden in the small print of Labour’s far Left manifesto could force people to sell their gardens and yards to avoid spiralling bills and could put many people into negative equity with their mortgages.

It comes despite claims by shadow Chancellor John McDonnell that a Labour government would not add to the taxes of people earning below £80,000.

But behind the income tax pledge is a proposal to gradually introduce a tax raid on their properties which is set to hit pensioners hardest.

The concerns have been raised after analysis of the Labour plans to introduce a Land Value Tax (LVT) - dubbed the garden tax - which eventually will be based on three per cent of the value of land for each property.

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The analysis commissioned by the Conservatives shows this would result in yearly tax bill of £3,837 for an average family home in England – a massive 224 per cent increase on the current average council tax bill of £1,185.

However, in some areas the increase could be much higher based on current values and council tax levels.

In Westminster local tax would rise a massive 2,300 per cent to £17,413 at the highest end.

In Birmingham the increase would be 320 per cent to an average of £2,726.

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Behind the income tax pledge is a proposal to gradually introduce a tax raid on peoples' properties

Meanwhile in Manchester there would be a 338 per cent hike to £2,614.

One of the poorest council areas of England - Barking and Dagenham - would see hard pressed council tax payers faced with an average bill of more than 500 per cent more at £4,579 a year.

The LVT plans are also in the Lib Dem and Green manifestos leading to new fears of “a coalition of chaos” forcing huge tax hikes across the UK.

Labour Land Campaign policy paper suggests introducing LVT gradually at first charging 0.85 per cent on the value of homes in replacement for the council tax.

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Mr McDonnell claimed Labour would not add to the taxes of people earning below £80k

However, it would rush in a three per cent rate on estates, privately rented properties, new build homes and holiday homes.

The paper adds that Labour would then work to bring the maximum rate on all homes across the UK.

It notes: “It is envisaged, therefore, that as the economy adjusted to the new LVT regime during a transition period of, say, 10-20 years, the initial concessionary rates of LVT [on owner-occupied homes] would be raised gradually to the standard rate of 3 per cent."

The respected thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has branded a Land Value Tax a “tax on gardens”, which could force homeowners to sell off their family gardens to lower their bills.

They also warned town halls would be bribed into giving the green light for more development to get their hands on more cash, leading to a return to “garden grabbing”.

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'This nonsensical policy sums up how Jeremy Corbyn,' Mr Johnson said

A study of the LVT by Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens on Oxfordshire County Council said that those with gardens will be forced to pay much more.

The report said: “Normally, the winners are those plots that have little or no garden and the losers are those where houses stand in large grounds and where maximum development is permitted by the planning regime.”

The proposals also flag up a tax raid on farmers who are currently exempt from council tax but could be forced to pay £6 billion in a new countryside tax putting many out of business and forcing up the price of food in shops.

The NFU has warned that the new Countryside Tax “would simply increase the cost of UK food production with no benefit for shoppers”.

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Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: “Jeremy Corbyn needs to hit ordinary working families with a bombshell of new taxes to pay for his reckless hard-left giveaways, and this lays bare the price we would all pay.

“Corbyn’s Garden Tax will send tax bills soaring, house prices plummeting, plunge people into negative equity and force families to build over their back gardens.”

He went on: “This nonsensical policy sums up how Jeremy Corbyn, along with his SNP, Lib Dem and Green comrades in the coalition of chaos would bring misery to every single family in Britain.

"It would wreck our economy, devastate farmers and increase the cost of food on the shelves.

“Only a vote for Theresa May and her local Conservative candidates will stop this terrible new town hall tax from becoming reality.”

Clarification

We have been asked by the Labour Land Campaign (LLC) to clarify that the figures quoted in this article were originally produced by the LLC In a research paper entitled “A Strategy For Replacing Council Tax and Business Rates With a Land Value Tax, a First Step Towards a More Equitable Tax System”. Whilst the 2016 Labour Party Manifesto promised to ‘initiate a review into reforming council tax and business rates and consider new options such as a land value tax’ according to the LLC their work was not produced for the Labour Party. The LLC state they are not affiliated with the Labour Party though they accept a large number of their members are also members of the Labour Party, for example Carol Wilcox (who wrote the research paper and gave a speech to the 2016 Labour Party Conference on the topic of land value tax) and also John McDonnell the Shadow Chancellor. Finally the LLC have stated that many organisations advocate land value taxation including the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute for Economic Affairs.